Living Water - Dissertations - Songwriting - Part 4

"Word density" is the amount of verbiage per unit time, that is, the number of syllables which the singer is required to enunciate per second. Lyrics should be written with syllable speed in mind. You can't generally force singers to sing at an allegro, one-syllable-per-sixteenth-note speed for prolonged periods of time (that's about eight syllables per second). It turns out that a normal comfortable reading speed is about 300-500 words per minute (about five to eight syllables per second). A comfortable speaking speed is about 150-200 words per minute (two to four syllables per second). And a comfortable singing speed is somewhat less than that range because of the additional effort required to pronounce words with specified pitches. In general, composers should be careful about writing music which has too high a word density because the singer might not be able to handle the pace - or the audience might not understand what's being sung.

Another contributing factor to word density is "syllable complexity." This is basically the way in which consecutive syllables interact with each other. "Thou art worthy" is a lot easier to sing (or say) than "The sixth sheik's sick sheep..." This isn't normally a consideration to most composers, but if the tempo is a fast one it would be worth singing through the piece as you write it and after it's finished to see if there are any syllabically difficult sections. This, of course, doesn't mean that you have to remove or rewrite them, but it might provide some motivation in that direction.

An example of extreme word density (on the high end of the scale) is Frank Mills' "Music Box Dancer," to which I've heard the words only once and which I therefore don't remember. However, it also is one of the songs which I had the opportunity to parodize some years back. Some of you have seen the words to the parody; the second verse begins:

My volleyballer is a girl with makeup that's smeared,
Her pretty face hits wood and so her features are weird,
But that's because she's keeping her glass eye on the ball
And doesn't see the bleachers into which she will fall.

Another aspect of lyrics related to word density is "message density" - how much do the words say with respect to the amount of music presented? This is a really difficult question to answer in general because there are so many different types of songs. For instance, praise choruses tend to have low word density, and their message density is a bit on the low side because their texts are usually short and repetitive.

Classical anthems (perhaps in the style of Brahms) have rather low message density because they stretch short texts over miles of paper, but also can have medium to high word density because of text repetition.

Hymns usually have high message density and moderate word density. Of all the song types, they probably are the most efficient with respect to information communicated in the amount of space occupied.

You'll want to consider message density as well as word density as you write your lyrics; these factors go a long way toward determining whether you'll be able to say what you want to say in the space you provide in your song framework.

One more thing: You should generally tailor your lyrics (and song) so that the total length is on the order of three minutes, at least if you're writing the kind of music which would be sung in a church service. There are numerous exceptions to this guideline, but I find that Gloria, the person who programs our Sunday morning music, usually allocates three minutes of service time for each musical element of a service.

Oh yes - it's also okay to use lyrics (and music) from other songs PROVIDED YOU OBTAIN PERMISSION FROM THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER. This, of course is no problem for public domain songs, but it could require payment of royalties and signing a copyright authorization contract in many cases. By the way, Romans 13:1ff tells us that we have to think of this and act on it!